What is the “it” that we’re talking about? Just about anything at all can save you money if you’re willing to try to accomplish it yourself and spend your time instead of your money. A perfect example of the things that you can do that will cost a lot less than having them done for you is the installation of a dishwasher where one has already been in place.

While the first installation of a new built in dishwasher is extensive work and wiring, replacing one requires only adding two hose lines and hooking up the connection, which is already in place for you. In comparison to having the second dishwasher connected by an installation company, the price to do it yourself is certainly a savings. Our dishwasher was already in place, all the connections were there, no wiring was required but the installation was going to cost about 75 dollars to accomplish.

When I asked the gentleman what the price was for, he responded that he charged 50 dollars just for showing up and the other 25 was for the hose lines that he would bring with him. Being unwilling to pay someone 50 dollars for “showing up” I found an online site that told me what I needed to do, how I should be doing it and thought, why not.

The connections were relatively easy to make, the hoses cost just 12 dollars at Home Depot as opposed to 25 and the price of the installation went down to 12 dollars and twenty minutes of my time. A savings of about 60 dollars. I’m in the wrong business, it seems.

The technician who was to come and install a new wireless network was also going to install the wired and wireless router and configure the network. He was also, unknown to us, going to charge an extra bill for installing a network using equipment that I provided. The fee for this simple install of router and cables was about fifty dollars.

I was told that it was “against company policy” for the customer to install their own equipment and network, a fact which was patently untrue. The savings for this was about fifty dollars. The cost to do it myself and save that fifty dollars was about twenty minutes and one phone call to the company in question asking why on earth it was against their policy for me to install my own network using equipment that I owned.

The moral of the story here is that you can save money by doing just about any small job yourself if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. There is one more moral too… don’t be bludgeoned into paying for a service that you can easily accomplish by someone who tells you that company policy prohibits that you save your money.

If you’re honestly convinced that it can be saved, then by all means take it to a repair person but the truth is that if you can’t get it accomplished yourself in a short amount of time, chances are you can replace it more cheaply than having it repaired. This holds true for many small electronics such as VCR’s, DVD players, remote controls and other things.

Tags: Do it yourself, doing your own home repairs, fixing it yourself to save money, home repairs, how to save money on home repairs, saving money on home repairs, trying to fix it yourself